


She Used to Dance

by Livia_LeRynn



Series: Rolling Stones Turn to Sand (if They Don't Find a Place to Stand) [2]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canon Disabled Character, Canon Injuries, Dancing, Drinking, F/M, Furiosa POV, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Max POV, Music, Party, Post-Canon, Present Tense, Stream of Consciousness, canon hurt/comfort, tipsy furiosa, vuvalini dance party
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-06-07 18:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 11,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6818893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Livia_LeRynn/pseuds/Livia_LeRynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once again Furiosa can't sleep, but this time it's because the Vuvalini have decided to teach the Citadel inner circle how to party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Drums

**Author's Note:**

> While working on a Furiosa-themed belly dance piece, I encountered a bit of skeptism. "Dancing? Is that something Furiosa would actually do?" For me the answer was obvious, if a bit complicated. My ruminations on the topic led to this fic.
> 
> This work is in the same chronology as my primary fic, 7000 Days, and events mentioned here are more fully fleshed out in that fic, or will as that fic progresses.

_Bum-ba-da, bum-ba-da, bum_. Drums! Furiosa shoots from her bed and darts to her window. All is quiet outside, nothing disturbing the starry expanse of desert night. She eases herself back to bed. It wouldn't be the first time she’d wandered into slumber only to be jerked back by some half dream, half memory, all nightmare. It wouldn't be the last either. 

She hopes she hasn't re-injured herself from moving to quickly. She'd hate to have to explain torn stitches caused by phantom drums. Her sides feel intact, not quite good as new, but nothing ever is. She takes a breath, long and slow enough to ease the air through the ache in her ribs. Then another.

She's had a lot of time to think...too much time probably. These past few quiet days of strategising have left her restless. She misses the Wasteland. She doesn't care if its rough air would tear her still fragile lungs. She misses feeling small as it reaches out from her in all directions. She misses the road singing in her bones.

It is only once she's settled herself back into bed that she realises how much her neck and shoulders don't hurt. She'd spent so many years with her prosthetic arm, but her body never adjusted, not really, at least not well. She'd just adjusted to the knots and stiffness its weight left in her muscles. The anchor belts always helped, but she'd still needed to shut herself up in her room and roll out the muscles of her left shoulder and upper back with a wooden cylinder. Still, for all the blisters, all the knots, all the malfunctions, the prosthetic was part of her, and she feels raw and exposed without it, entirely too human.

 _Ba-da-bum, ba-da-bum_. There's still drumming. She grumbles as she gets up again to investigate. She slips on a long cardigan and a pair of soft leather shoes. She feels these little luxuries to be a bit silly. She never thought she would have a separate pair of shoes just for wearing inside, but they certainly are convenient. She is rather glad she listened when Leona had insisted she accept the cardigan and slippers; she can't imagine having to completely dress herself every time some issue needs her attention in the middle of the night, and it is still too cold to brave the stone walls in just her thin remnant of a shirt. 

Before, she would just sleep dressed, go through the hassle of changing only when absolutely necessary. The Mothers told her that clothing rumbled with sleep and caked with blood and dust hardly projected her power and authority. Funny, she never had any problems with that before. But things are different now, they insisted: she is beyond rank or hierarchy... She is something else entirely, and how is she supposed to take care of the people if she can't take care of herself?

 _Ba-da-ba-da-bum, ba-da-ba-da-bum._ Is the drumming coming from inside or out? Both? Above! She thinks she hears some laughter as well as she heads for the dome. Why would there be drumming? All the Doof Corp's drums are littering the desert floor. And before that…she remembers how the Corps would practice on the walls, on the pipes, on whatever they could find, but real drums were only for battle. The corps would hold a beat while the boys sparred and the pups tussled. Drums or rubble, it didn't matter. Every fighter knows rhythm, from the pounding of the pulse to the chamber, strike, chamber, strike of furious fists.

She follows the rhythm down the hall and up to the next level. She finds the vault door wide open, not propped open as it has been for the last few days. This is the center of the action all right.

Iris is bouncing her hips. Her grey braids are swinging as she gestures for someone to join her. "No Honey, it's not about other people; it's about dancing for yourself."

Furiosa stands in the open doorway, her eyes narrow, her brows lowered. “What's going on here?”

“Fury! Come join us,” coos Iris as she looks up, her hips still bouncing. “The salvage party has returned.”

"We put everything in Shop One," says Toast.

And sure enough it has. These are the Doof Corps drums and the Lift Corps given new life and purpose. She scans the group for newly returned faces. She refuses to expect anyone, refuses to Hope. She's glad to see another surviving Vuvalini and more Warboys warming up to the group. No Val. No Nux. No Giddy. The last hurts the most – the Citadel could really use its resident historian and philosopher. But there is one face she least expects to see…

“What are you doing here?” It comes out sounding angrier than she intends.

He half chuckles as he raps his knuckles against a drum between his legs. He's clearly not offended. He almost smiles as he scoots himself over to make room for her in the circle. “You're feeling better.”

"Yeah," she says quickly. She'd rather not talk about herself. She'd rather not talk about anything actually…where to begin? But she is glad to sit beside him, glad for his easy acceptance of her presence.


	2. Trial and Error

Max thinks he likes her best when she's angry, when she's all lifted chest and tight jaw. No, angry might not be the way to describe it… Dominant? No, too sexual. Authoritative? He's never seen her any other way; even when she's in no state to lead, everyone looks to her for cues. It's a power he doesn't envy.

She looks around the circle, eyes cold. "Why didn't anyone tell me?" The drumming stops.

"We wanted to surprise you,” offers Capable.

"Call me surprised,” Furiosa answers flatly. 

Tension suspends the group. They wait- look to her, look to each other, look to him, and keep waiting. Finally, she exhales for them all. It's the long heavy sigh of a battle not worth waging.

The drumming starts up again, first Leona, then the others while Iris pulls a boy into the center with her. She undulates through her torso, squeezing through each muscle, and coaxes the boy to do the same. He does, easily and eagerly. He's so pleased with himself that he mimics her next movement as well, a repeated shoulder shake. He doesn't seem to mind that he's lacking a rather key pair of body parts. He just shakes away. Max shakes his head, half embarrassed for no explicable reason, half envious. He had thought he'd seen everything.

He has to admit that he's enjoying striking the drum. There's something deeply satisfying about the repetitive, pointless action. He plays with different strikes, makes different sounds. He considers using both hands then decides against it. No point in risking a worse injury after only fourteen days. Leona and Iris had praised its clean edges and called him lucky before demanding he come inside for some stitches and antibiotics. He'd refused; he could still drive, and that was all that mattered. His luck has held so far, no signs of infection, but his luck has to run out at some point...he's counting on it... but not here, not now. 

Furiosa sits beside him in the spot he's cleared for her. Someone hands her a smaller drum, and she tries a few different ways of holding it: against her hip, between her thighs. She strikes it in each position as if testing the sound. It reminds him of fumbling in the dark for a familiar light switch in a childhood home. It's never in the same place you remember because you grew while you were gone. It's the same as it always was; you’re the one who changed. 

She even tries striking it with her stump, then alternating between stump and elbow. This way seems to satisfy her, so she sticks with it. She plays with the rhythm, letting more and less time pass between the strikes, until she finds a variation she likes best, a rhythm no one else can make.

He’s changed his mind; he likes her best when she's focused, stubbornly gnawing her way through a problem. He thinks of all the different ways he's seen her use her teeth, her thighs, her shoulders…like the way Jessie used to close the door with her hip…every body part multi-purpose.

He decides she must hate needing about as much as he hates being needed. She doesn't ask for help; she does what needs doing. If you’re around, she'll make you earn your keep. If you're not, she'll make do. That's when he likes her best; third time's a charm.

As if on cue, she pauses to scratch her right forearm on the prickly hair on the side on her head. She notices him watching her. She watches him back as if he were an animal she's considering offering a bite of her lunch. He lets the corners of his mouth lift ever so slightly, and he waits. She mirrors him. Then she goes back to her drumming.

He remembers a red plastic toy drum he had as a kid. It was probably older then he was, probably something his parents bought secondhand. He found it tucked away years later, still perfect. The lid it wore in place of a skin held within it a veritable treasure trove of noise makers: yellow drumsticks, a harmonica, maracas, a little tambourine. He gave it to Sprog. Of course Jessie was annoyed at the incessant _rat-a-tat-tat-tat_ of plastic on plastic. She was even more annoyed when he joined in the racket, but then he placed the little harmonica in her hand and said, “Here, yell at me with this.” She brought it to her mouth and blew so hard she had to cough.

Is this really a good idea? Of course not. But here he is. Here he is.


	3. Variations

She remembers times when drums weren't for war. Furiosa remembers the grape stomping days. She remembers the squish of grapes between her toes while drums encouraged her youthful frenzy. Valkyrie would squeal and splash her with the red goop. She remembers how it would stain her calves for days afterwards. She would be about to grab a handful to lob back when the supervising mother would throw her a stern look. So she would kick at Val instead, and the mother would look away and continue her drumming while the other children kept on stomping. She remembers how tired they would all get, but only until the stomping was done. Instantly re-energised, they would chase each other home. She remembers teaming up to take down Val's older brother, and how the three of them would wrestle through the dust patches, stirring it up so it swallowed them and clung to their sticky legs.

She remembers the drum Grandmother Fang would beat during forms practice. Its simple rhythm was meant to steady and unify the students, but she remembers one day when she had been placed with the older students for a pattern she thought she knew, but each beat seemed to come too fast. She remembers panicking as the beats overwhelmed her, and each movement came out so sloppily that Grandmother Fang pulled her out of the group for remedial practice. As she held back tears of frustration and shame, she pushed through her movements. When she had finished, the old woman pushed a single peach stone into the palm of her hand.

“You must first break the protecting armour before the seeds can grow,” Grandmother Fang explained before returning to her drum.

Furiosa tucked the peach stone into the folds of her top and let her eyes wander about the group before she rejoined then in their practice. The older students regarded her with expressions of empathetic recognition. The drum beat felt just as insistent after that, but its insistence felt less threatening, more like a gentle shove.

She remembers the feast nights, how they marked the spokes on the Wheel of Year, especially the ones when the men would come home. She remembers her father bouncing her to the drum beats when she was very young. She thinks it may be her earliest memory, but she can't be sure. She thinks it may have been Samhain, the end of the harvest and farewell to the men for winter. That's not why this memory sticks out. That night, water fell from the sky like a gift from ghosts or tears from the Goddess.

She remembers the drums for her father. Their slow, steady beats returned his energy to the God while her people swayed in the summer heat. They drummed for the others lost as well; the Reaping Mother rarely visited just for one. Her father had been scavenging in city ruins far away when the ruins collapsed and released a pocket of radiation on him and his initiate. The men gathered them up with the other injured and headed home for the valley. She never felt lucky as she swayed beside his burial mound even though everyone said having it there was a blessing. This was something she only ever understood later, when she was far from home, soldiering to strange drums.

These same strange drums sing for her now, their distinctive vibrations still eerily familiar. Their skins stretch awkwardly, adjusting to their knew found domesticity. She empathises. Everyone is making adjustments, from the Imperator turned governor to the feral turned honoured guest. Just like K.T. said all those years ago, everyone lives by trial and error. Everyone plays by ear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I go into Vuvalini religion in much more depth in  7000 Days . Basically, they are Synchronistic Neo-Pagan Pantheists. Divinity (or Panthean as they call it) is differentiated into male and female (God and Goddess), corresponding to energy and matter. Each is then further differentiated into various conceptual figures representing different roles, life processes, and life stages, for example, the Nurturing Mother. The God and Goddess are said to also manifest themselves as various mythological figures whose stories have been borrowed and modified from various world cultures. For example, the Vuvalini have borrowed the Ancient Egyptian myth of the desert being the result of Sekhmet's breath when she is angry. These often conflicting stories are not believed to be true in a literal sense.
> 
> In Vuvalini culture, women were primarily agrarian. They moved about as they pleased, but their crops were their primary means of sustenance. The men were semi-nomadic. They traveled during seasons of lower resources as to not further stress the Vuvalini homeland and returned to help for planting and harvesting in spring and fall. Men arrived on Imbolc (roughly early August as the river started flooding) and Mabon (roughly late March as the high heat of summer dissipated). They then stayed until Beltaine and Samhain respectively. These, plus solstices and equinoxes formed Vuvalini feast occasions. Obviously these cycles became disrupted.


	4. Pulse

“So why did you come back?” she asks. Beneath her words other questions are buried; “Why didn't you stay? Why do you do anything you do?”

There's the simple answer: the leather bag behind him and its contents. Then there's the truth. He thinks words were invented in an effort to avoid such things because words are always too small. He'd thought his way was better.

He's not sure how much she remembers. She studies him, waiting for his answer. She'll take whatever he says and turn it over in her mind, looking for hidden meanings, and she won't find any; whatever he says will be too small.

He hated seeing her helpless and fragile, her skin grey against the orange sunset. The desert was filling her body, squeezing her out while she held to her own edges. Words are too small, but sounds... sounds like her dry rasping, his own stammering, sounds like her singular, swelling gasp...sounds are truth, perfect and primal.

 _Bi-dim, bi-dim, bi-dim._ Her pulse was too soft and too fast, a defiant whisper through clenched teeth. He strained to hear it. _Bi-dim, bi-dim, bi-dim._ "Here I am. Here I am. And you?"

If he could have emptied himself out to build her back to the fullness of herself, he would have…because she mattered. But that's not how such things work. No matter how empty he became, she still needed time, her own strength of will, and a dash of luck; he was frustratingly powerless over those variables.

So he did what he could and waited. He warmed her body as she slept. He checked her vitals probably obsessively often. _Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum._ It was the most beautiful sound in the world. _Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum._

Between checks he would just watched the stars come out and waited as she sunk into him and the engine hum moved through their bodies. The women told him to sleep, to let them take the watch, but he refused because she mattered and he didn't.

In the end, that’s why he left: she mattered too much. It wasn’t that she mattered in the sense that she was going to change The Citadel, rebuild her Green Place, or anything concrete. She simply mattered. She mattered too much.

A feast can kill a starving man. Useless guts simply forget how to function. But they still hunger just the same.

He's not sure how much she remembers. He hopes she doesn't remember much.


	5. Fragments

He stops drumming long enough to reach behind the circle and grab her old leather bag, scuffs and all. It must have ended up on a bike when everything was unpacked and repacked. He sets it down carefully at her feet. 

“Thought you might be missing this.”

She looks down at it and then back up at him. “The bag?” Sure, it's useful, but...

“Open it," he urges. He watches her expectantly.

She pulls it onto her lap and leans on it while she pulls the zipper. The action reminds her of the old holidays black when the men came home with gifts from the old world and distant places. There were drums then too, playing the joyful rhythms of holidays. She smiles wistfully. So that’s what the Mothers are doing: bringing home to a new place. And here is her fool, an unwitting participant.

She reaches inside and finds cold, familiar metal twisted in unfamiliar ways. She pulls out four pieces and sets them in a semi-circle. Her pauldron with its padding is warped but still recognizable. Its leather straps have been torn, freeing it from the stump cap. That will probably need to be replaced, but she thinks its padding is reusable. The forearm supports are still attached at the top, but the hand has been severed at the wrist. The center support points steadily to where the hand should be, but the side supports peel away like flower petals. The big wrench is still there, as are the pliers in the hand, thankfully, as finding the right sized replacements would have taken a while. The tubing and wires radiate from the severed hand like wild hair from a feral face. The center finger has been smashed, its steel caging collapsed, and the smallest has been severed entirely. It sits all by its lonesome, unrecognized outside of context, just a little wrench on undulating metal.

She notices him watching her, studying her face as she focuses. He's waiting for a reaction while she loses herself in the project before her. But isn't that the reason for work? Otherwise life is too expansive. Here is something she can do, something small, something she can complete, something to pass the time. But she's passing too much time, the wrong time, and she's already indebted.

"Thank you," she says, starting slowly, but then the words awkwardly tumble from her mouth. They are far too small to hold all she's packed into them. She's too small to hold all that's in her.


	6. Salvage

Her face changes subtly as she examine each of the pieces in turn. He knows the look well; he's seen it on her face while she repaired damage on the rig…and in his own in his rear vision mirror. It's the look that reaches beyond the immediate bend in the road to its eventual soft curve. It knows how hard to brake without thinking. It knows without knowing.

And then it lifts from her face as she turns her attention towards him. “Thank you,” she says.

“Think it's salvageable?” he asks.

She turns the pinkie finger in her hand and runs her thumb over its rippled surface. “Yeah, I think I can make it work.”

“Thought you could.” It comes out softer than he intends. He goes back to drumming before she has a chance to comment, he hopes before she notices. 

Of course it's a useless hope. She watches him as he drums while she returns the pieces to the bag. She steals glances at him from beneath her lowered eyelids and the looks back to her work. But he sees.

Then she pulls her own drum back and joins him. She follows his beat for a few phrases before unleashing her own variation. The two rhythms tumble together. She throws him a smirk before she accelerates her tempo, taunting him to catch her. He enjoys the challenge. _Bi-da-da yuh-dum, bi-da-da yuh-dum._ She smiles like the first light of morning. 

Someone passes him a bottle of clear liquid. “From the Buzzards,” explains Toast. "Apparently we can pay them in potatoes to not try and kill us."

He sniffs it first. He can't quite place the smell, familiar but with jagged edges. It's some sort of alcohol. He takes a mouthful and recognises it instantly even though he can't quite remember it's name. Broken glass and blue flame, that's what it tastes like; so alien he might as well have licked the surface of the moon. 

He takes another couple of gulps, bigger this time, and passes the bottle to Furiosa. She drinks and then wrinkles her nose. 

“Alcohol.” Then ancient words bubble up from the dark depths of his mind, “Aqua vitae…”

“I know what it is.” She takes another swig. “And I know what it does.” She drinks again, this time closing her eyes and smiling at the burn. "The first taste is always a shock."

Max waits to feel fuzzy, waits for the night to swallow him. The liquid puts a certain fire in his belly – not the kind that rages, more like warm coals that boil water and warm toes. It's the kind of fire well-suited to drumming; it’s steady without too much smoke or soot. It's the kind that draws you in and wraps you up.

"Vodka," he says, more to himself than anyone else. "That's what this is."

She nods and taking a longer gulp before passing the bottle on. Then she picks up her drum again and runs her fingers along its rim. “I still owe you a bike,” she says, seemingly out of nowhere.

“No - already took one.”

“Fully loaded?" Her voice sounds hopeful.

He shrugs.

“I guess I'll have to do you one better. Come walk with me.” She starts to rise and waits for him to do the same.

“You don't owe me ," he protests. He feels like he's made that clear already.

“You can't just save your life and pretend that nothing happened," she says, a little more loudly than he would have liked.

He feels everyone's eyes on him. They're still drumming, still dancing, but their attention has shifted. “You saved mine too," he mutters as he stands.

They’re outside the dome before she responds, “You saved mine last.” Her voice is sharp. She's clearly used to her word being final.

“You, uh, saved mine more,” he grunts under his breath as she leads him into the lift. He's not even sure what he means. He hasn't exactly been keeping a tally. They’d just found a rhythm.

“Shop One,” she says to the lift boy, who relays the message down the shaft. Then she turns back to Max, “What’s your point?”

“You don't owe me anything.” 

“Fine,” she mutters as the lift descends. “Don't think of it as owing. Think of it as a reciprocated gift. You brought back something important that I lost. I have the ability to do the same for you; allow me to use it.” The lift door opens, and she leads him out and into the mechanics’ shop where the wreckage from The Road War has been collected. “Take a look. Let me know if you see anything that looks familiar.”

She flicks a switch, and one by one, a line of gas lamps illuminates a path along the wall. He peers around her into the long and narrow corridor. An eerie stillness fills it and makes itself at home in the long shadows and sickly lamplight. Rows and rows of debilitated cars reach away from the light and into the blackness. 

While he lingers fearfully behind, Glory appears and runs ahead. She giggles as she darts into the shadows. Her dark curls snake their way around corners as she goes looking for old friends.


	7. Wreckage

She has to wonder if this is where the dead boys go when they find no Valhalla waiting for them. Do they turn back dejectedly to curl around the pedals bearing their names and wait to ride again? Do they regret their final leaps of faith? Do they watch her from the open spaces where their windows used to be?

“I know,” she says to the man holding back like prey watching for a predator. "Trust me, it's better now than when it's busy.” She's not sure she believes that for herself, but for him it's almost certainly true. She knows ferals don't like tight, noisy spaces. She doesn't know if he was brought through here when he was first inprocessed, but all of the workshops look alike. She's seen more than enough inprocesses.

She reaches back for him, but all she feels is the night air. “I don't know which one is yours… Unless you don't care and just want me to pick.”

“No, I'll let you know.”

He cares alright. Damn territorial feral…not that after thousands of days in a so-called society she's really any different. She still clings to things and shuns people; she's aware of it now, so she can do a better job of hiding it. She just has more possessions now so she can spread out her possessiveness, enough possessions to feel guilty for having them but never so guilty as to stop attaching to them. Maybe that's why she still insists on wearing her old shirt even though there's only half of it left.

So she leads him down the dimly lit path. His footsteps echo off the stone. _Dum. Sheh-um. Dum. Sheh-um._ The pattern repeats itself endlessly into the shadows. For the time being, it keeps the ghost boys at bay. But how many others has he brought with him? _Dum. Sheh-um. Dum. Sheh-um._

“There, there she is…,” he says as he approaches a car. All his apprehension seems to have gone and left a calm reverence in its place.

Matte, rusted – to her it looks ordinary, but there's an unmistakable light to his expression. Maybe the engine is shine. Or maybe the engine isn't what matters… She watches him survey the damage and the modifications from before, and she sees herself working on her prosthetic or The War Rig. 

She thinks of all the times she retreated to work on the old girl. She's never been much of a black thumb; she knows the basics, understands the concepts well enough, but her gifts lie elsewhere. Her passions are strategy and subterfuge. She remembers crawling along the old girl’s underbelly and searching for places to hide her grips and footholds. It felt like she was listening to the ancient machine tell her secrets. Instead of scorning or correcting those imperfections, she would give them new purpose. She would trust her life with her Rig’s imperfections as they held her weapons or as they held her and the road ran beneath them.

She told her own secrets to her prosthetic, and it held to her by way of her imperfections. It knew the taste of her blood and of her sweat and of the clear fluid from her open blisters…and it knew the taste of her tears. They would fall hot and wet on the cold metal when she had shut herself away, ostensibly because she needed to work on it, but in reality because she couldn't take the world anymore. She would wipe the tears away before they could rust the metal. The arm didn't mind; tears were just part of the gig.

“She something special?” she asks, intrigued that he's gendered his car as female. The Warboys always thought of theirs as male. 

He nods in the shadows. “Yeah, been with me since before the Fall. Thought I'd lost her for good this time.” She thinks that might be the most she's ever heard him speak.

“Before the Fall?”

He nods again. “In Melbourne.”

That explains it. Melbourne…the last of the cities. She remembers Miss Giddy sharing the news of its destruction in hushed tones because they were only allowed to know about the past. The present outside The Citadel was forbidden to them; that's why Giddy had to hide her talking box.

“Before the landing," he muses. "The Fall was long.”

“That's why the Mothers never went to another city after Adelaide. They wanted a head start before everyone else had to hit the ground running.”

He's pensive now, small in the dark like a prey animal watching for predators. If she says something wrong, he'll bolt. She finds it odd to think of him this way. Sure she's seen his eyes wild and his forehead damp…but she also remembers the weight of his body pressing down on hers. She remembers the smell of the desert on his skin. She remembers him squirming all blazing eyes and dust between her thighs.

“Should go back,” he says, his voice unsteady. “Else they'll think…”

She is sure it is already too late. “Why do you care what they think?”


	8. Sins

It's a fair question, one he can't exactly answer. He shouldn't care what the others think; they aren't his people. He doesn't have people. He has no reason to care…except for the distinct possibility they turn out to be right. Even that…everything would be so much easier if it were only about something as simple and primitive as sex. Hadn't his sex been running to the wilderness after quickies for millennia? Wham, bam, thank you mam?…no thanks. The whole business is too risky. He doesn't need any more ghosts, even if the others seem to like her. The world is better of with her in it.

So he doesn't say anything. He simply lets her pass him on her way back to the lift, and he falls in behind her. Her steps are quiet on the stone floor. His own more than compensate. He tries to quiet them, make them less intrusive, less jarring. _Dum. Sheh-um. Dum. Sheh-um._

And in a way, the whole situation reminds him of adolescent backseat fumblings...or more specifically, the morning after. He can't quite put his finger on it, can't quite describe it even to himself, but he remembers all the embarrassing aftermath of intimacy. He remembers feeling exposed, vulnerable, raw. Some girls were cruel, but Jessie was always merciful, tried to make him feel worthy. Like with Adam and fucking Eve, an apple is never just an apple. And now the garden is gone.

He considers himself an expert on sin. He's done them all. Sins of commission, sins of omission, sins of thought, sins of action, sins of inaction, sins of failure, sins of existence. But this, whatever it is, isn't sin, though it's primal and profane. It's the desperate and haunting result of finding that somehow, after everything he's seen and done, he's still a foolish teenager stumbling into intimacy in a beat-up car.

He's as much of an animal as ever. He can't simply ignore the curve of her hips beneath her knit garment. He can't simply ignore the barely contained swelling of her chest. He can't simply ignore the fact that he knows the sound of her heartbeat or the smell of the desert in her hair. He knows fear of her crushing lack.

The drums are still going when the pair step off the lift. They beats are even wilder now, ecstatic even. They echo through the stone halls like a heartbeat through a chest. _Ba-dum-ba-dum, bi-dum-bi-dum_. There's joy in every strike.

"The Mothers always said people like drumbeats because they remind us of being in the womb and hearing our mothers' heartbeats," she muses aloud. "They remind us of when we didn't care about anything; we just were."

He likes that idea. It reminds him of the hum of an engine, the rhythm of the road, those moments when he becomes a wheel steering, pedal pushing automaton. He likes just being, but that's been harder than usual. His mind's been full, and all the road noise in the world can't seem to clear it. The ghosts are restless.


	9. Mumbo-Jumbo

They follow the drums like blood knows the way to the heart. Furiosa is still speaking as though she is remembering a dream, not quite to him, not quite to herself, “The Mothers believe that drums are sacred. They see them as the unification between the God and the Goddess. How do you separate a drumbeat from the strike to the drum or the drum being struck? Separation is just an illusion. Unity is inescapable.”

“Sounds like a lot of mumbo-jumbo,” he scoffs quietly as if he's not sure if his reaction will offend her.

She laughs, releasing tension into tonight air. “Of course it is. The Mothers always said the factual world is less important than the truth you take from it.”

“What truth is that?” He's calmer now. The drums have soothed him. There's no tightness in his mouth or in his brow. His eyes freely show their sadness. 

She shrugs. “Be cheating to tell you. Besides,” she softens her manner, “what makes you think there's only one? How do know if yours and mine are the same?”

He shrugs back. His shoulders slide beneath his once-black leather as the lamplight illuminates the contours of his face. He looks as tired as she feels, weary, lonely. He watches her with a certain softness to his expression, half a smile, half a sigh, as if a full smile is too heavy.

The vault door to the the dome is still wide open. The sounds of the joy therein can't help but escape into the surroundings. Furiosa sees it that the party has grown in her absence. More boys and even a pair of milkers have ventured by. She recognizes Kai by his tattoos as he pokes at the keys of Giddy's old piano. She's glad it's getting some use, and the others seem to agree as they shout their encouragement.

"Seems we're missing all the fun," her fool finally says.

"If these women are anything like I remember, I don't think they'll be stopping any time soon."

"These are your people? Weren't you in bed?"

Again? Is this the same man she had to coax out of the shadows not a few minutes before? Had he been waiting all this time for her permission to make a few cracks?

"Napping," she snaps playfully. "Running this place takes its toll."

"So you're in charge of all of this? Impressive..."

"Nominally at least; I still have my advisors keeping me in line..." ... Telling her when to walk, when to rest, what to eat...she was surprised the Mothers let her try the vodka.

"And you still have time..." he gestures towards himself.

She nudges him in the ribs as if he were one of her favorite boys. "False humility doesn't suit you." The she turns her attention back toward the vault as she plots how they might sneak back inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kai is one of my original charters. He appears later in _7000 Days._


	10. Raging Feral Powers

Max feels her elbow glide into him with a purposeful, controlled bump. It's the first time they've touched each other since he's been back, and it feels a long time coming. He doesn't know how to react. He's been so careful, keeping his legs from brushing hers, refusing her hand as she reached for him in the repair shop, and now that she's caught him he can't decide whether to recoil, playfully touch back, or to just let his body absorb the contact. It's broken too soon.

She's opening the vault door even wider, slowly so the hinges don't creak. She holds it open with her hip so he can pass through. He appreciates the gesture even though he thinks the door is heavy enough to hold itself. Then they walk in quietly, trying not to draw attention, but as the guests of honour, their efforts are in vain. 

"Welcome back," teases Iris with a smile.

"We were just..." Furiosa starts.

"Shh, not another word," says Leona as she throws Iris a bemused glance. "There are young ears in the room."

The younger women giggle, their smiles bright in the low light. Furiosa's cheeks are red as she slips along the outside of the circle. Everyone watches her except for the few who watch him instead. Some have probably glimpsed him earlier, but to him they are strangers. He decides the women must have vetted them. He remembers how suspicious they were of him. 

"Shit, she really is human," cackles the pale girl with the sharp features. 

The words are barely out before her constant companion dives on to of her. "You can't say that!" the one called Cheedo scolds as the pale one squirms beneath her tickling.

At least the young couple's antics are providing a bit of a distraction. All the attention sets him on edge, and Furiosa doesn't seem to be enjoying it either. However her reaction is more one of annoyance, like a teenager just home from a first date. She slinks into her spot from behind as if she were sneaking home through a back window.

"Here, you look like you need this," says Capable apologetically as she passes Furiosa what looks like a fresh bottle of the Buzzard vodka. 

"I think I understand how you got your name," says Furiosa.

She squeezes the bottle between her thighs so she can unscrew the cap. If that's not the sexiest way to open a bottle he doesn't know what is - more dignified than teeth on a beer cap, at least.

"Careful Fury," says Iris, living up to her maternal title.

"I know." She glares as if to say, "I deserve this,” And takes a drink anyway.

Leona ululates her approval. Some of the others try to imitate the sound and then laugh heartily when they fail. Only Toast seems to get it right. That takes Iris's attention off of Furiosa long enough for the poor woman to take a second sip.

"How do they do that?" Max asks as he accepts the bottle from her."

"Flap your tongue quickly while you yell." She laughs at the confused face he's making. "I know, right? I can't do it either. I used to get made fun of for it; I've always been too uptight to ululate, even when I was a kid."

He tries it, first with an almost comical falsetto then relaxes into his natural register. It feels pleasantly odd in his mouth.

"Show off," she scoffs.

He shrugs. "Raging feral powers."

She smiles. Her smiles are still new to him. For all her practiced presentation, her smiles are genuine, which is probably why they are so rare. But he doesn't really know. For as much as she feels familiar to him, she's a mystery. They've somehow skipped over birthdays and favorite colors to breakdowns and blood transfusions. Maybe that's just the way things are now. Maybe he's just a relic of a lost time.


	11. Dancers

Furiosa smiles again. She feels the Buzzard vodka working its magic, making her somehow bow light and languid. Her cheeks ache, her ribs too, but she doesn’t mind; it’s just background noise like wheels over the road. She can't remember the last time she's smiled so much. It's been years. It's been a lifetime.

She returns to drumming. _Bi-bum, bi-bum, bi-bum._ Then comes the drum beside her in complement. _Bam-bi, bam-bi, bam-bi._ The two rhythms intertwine, and tempo increases, not out any desire to show him up; it just happens organically. Each drummer has found a niche in the spaces the other leaves silent. _Bi-bam-bum-bi, bi-bam-bum-bi._

Iris positions herself in front of them as she dances, marking the rhythm expertly in the different parts of her trunk even as the temp accelerates. She pulls Cheedo in with her. The girl has apparently been practicing. She taunts Furiosa with her hips and her gestures. She marks the rhythm there and in her shoulders.

"Come dance with us," Cheedo says as she leans over Furiosa. "I can show you if you don't remember."

"You used to dance," offers Leona between her own beats. "I remember seeing you."

"I remember." She hesitates, happy to drum.

She used to dance. There was a time when drums were for dancing. She knows she used to let their rhythms fill her feet and hips even though she forgets how exactly it used to work. She remembers holding hands with Valkyrie as the two of them swirled around the fire. She remembers watching her birth mother and initiate mother move together as one body to the strumming of some primitive guitar variation. Apparently guitars were not always for war either.

"Fury, don't pull your stitches," Iris nags playfully. 

Furiosa decides to let the Mothers have their fun. Of course they know the best way to get her to do something is to insinuate that she can't. She looks around the circle. The drumming slows in deference to her as everyone watches. She doesn't mind the attention; she knows what can be seen, and what can't. So why was she so embarrassed walking in?

"I'll dance if he does," she offers. "Two for the price of one." 

"Don't wanna pull your stitches," he taunts.

"Don't worry; I won't try to keep up with you and your raging feral powers."

She rises. She tries to remember all the movements she used to do. Mostly she remembers spinning, letting her arms fly out around her, letting herself get dizzy and not caring when she stumbled.

All that seems a bit much for now. Instead she fumbles for any remnants of musicality. She teases movement from her hips and core, finds what works, finds what's too weak or too sore. She finds the muscles that are slow to awaken and those that are overly eager... those that have grown stronger over the years, and those that will need tedious stretching later. She takes special note of the muscles that stretch easily now but will have snapped themselves back to rigid self-protection by morning. Muscles aren't all that different from people.

She catches feral eyes on her. "What are you staring at?" She keeps moving as she speaks, and he keeps staring.

"Never seen you move like a girl before," he says awkwardly in what she thinks is an attempt at humour.

Her eyes narrow. "I'll let that slide for now as long as you get your ass up and join me." She offers her hand to help him to his feet.

He takes it with surpring comfort and ease. His texture is pleasantly familiar. His grip is firm and purposeful and over before she can analyze it.

"What do I do?"

"Just move with the beat." Then she leans in and lowers her voice, "The sooner we give them something boring to watch, the sooner they'll move on to something else."

He seems to like that idea. He shuffles awkwardly for a few measures before sheepishly admitting, "Used to be better at this."

"Didn't we all?" But then she looks to Iris and how she is guiding Cheedo through a torso undulation. "Why don't you try that?"

It isn't the hardest movement, but she isn't expecting him to take to it as easily as he does. She nods her approval as she continues her own hip bumps.

He's well built for a feral, sturdy and meaty, well built for anyone really. No wonder he was picked up as a blood bag. She watches him roll through his belly with the natural ease of an animal. The movement is uneven where one muscle is stronger than another. 

Feral, feral is the perfect word to describe it. You can shave a feral, teach a feral language even, but a feral can never really be tamed. Ferals belong to the sand, to the not-quite-even undulations of dunes.

He gives her a look both teasing and questioning, as if he's caught her sneaking something.

"Just those raging feral powers again," she explains with a smirk.

He stumbles forward. He catches himself just as their shoulders are about to collide, and instead they touch. She knows his shoulders well, knows the softness of their flesh, the way they curve around her like a shield. She is curious about his other parts as well, like maybe those muscles of his abdomen that have unfortunately stopped undulating...or maybe the bones of his pelvis...

She remembers how her mothers would end up draped in each other's laps once they tired of dancing, maybe one's head on the other's thigh, maybe one leaning against the other's shins. They always seemed so fascinated with the little details of each other even after they had been together for years. They would touch each other easily and thoughtlessly...or thoughtfully, like when one would kneed the knots from the other's neck and shoulders. As sand and soil colored limbs danced over softening muscles, little moans would chase the day's tension away and into the night.

Furiosa wonders what it's like to have someone who knows where her muscles ache without being told. It's never been something she thought to want, but it always looked so pleasant. She turns slowly as she dances, and she can't help but notice the way the past is repeating itself. She sees the same intimacy in how The Dag drapes her arms around Cheedo’s shoulders as Cheedo sways and circles her hips. The Dag pushes aside black hair to clear a place for her mouth in the vulnerable hollow where Cheedo's jaw and neck meet. Cheedo squirms and giggles as her knees soften.

Furiosa completes her slow circle as she turns these thoughts over in her mind. She circles her hips as she imagines what such touches must feel like when joyously received. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It occurred to me that I should provide some background into what moves Furiosa is able to do considering her approximately one week old torso injuries. I'm basing this off of the times I injured my mid/lower ribs and what I was able to do shortly after. Obviously hers involves some muscle tears and organ damage as well.  
> Most of her movements here are hip bumps powered from the glutes. She should be able to do these without any effort from her intercostals, serratus, or obliques. She can also do a weighted hip circle, but it comes out a bit lopsided.  
> In short: yes- glute-powered bumps, wonky weighted circles.  
> Kind of, with difficulty- umis, hip twists and horizontal hip 8s, internal hip movements.  
> Bad ideas- chest lifts, vertical hip 8s (these might belong in the previous level), body waves, shimmies.  
> Nope- side winder, side undulations, chest circles and tilts, pretty much anything else involving chest work.  
> Some of the harder stuff could probably form the basis of whatever physical therapy she's doing though.


	12. Storms

Furiosa's hip bones lift in crisp succession. Tock, tock, tock. The edges of her cardigan bounce and swish like foam on the crest of a wave….or maybe his memory of the ocean has been corrupted. Maybe it never was anything like he remembers. He wonders if the same could be said for other things. For the slow rhythm of pelvis against pelvis with all the time in the world? For safety? For love?

Max feels a a shove at his back, and he stumbles forward. He stops himself on the edge of disaster and turns to see Glory dangling from the side of the dome. Her curls hang wildly around her face, and she squeals with delight? How did she? She just laughs and laughs; ghosts aren't bound by the laws of physics, a truth she takes great pleasure in exploiting.

He can't very well tell Furiosa that a ghost child pushed him. No, it's better she just thinks he's clumsy. Why should he care if she thinks he's clumsy? Because ghost or no ghost, he is.

He's no Furiosa, who some manages to even stagger with grace. Her hip bones are still lifting, each movement sharp and powerful...and grace, always grace. He thinks of standing fixed in awe at a coming storm.

Furiosa turns and in doing so reveals her current trick. Her hips take turns swelling beneath the cling of her cardigan, worn, torn, sheer, and sensual. With each beat, one of her glutes squeezes and lifts, taking her pelvis with it. Then it relaxes just as the other punches up. Punching - that's exactly what she's doing, punching with her bum. That's why each movement has such precise brutality. _Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum,_ each one gets a punch.

Then she turns to face him and presses her pelvis forward like it's pulling rest of her along. Discomfort hides in her face. He assumes she's pushing herself too hard, but he wouldn't expect anything less from her. But maybe that's not it. She changes over to a gentle sway, like she's found the current all the beats are riding, the blood flewing through the heart... _ba-dum, ba-dum, bi-dum._ Glory has taken up a drum now too, and Angharad peers over Capable's shoulder and watches her hands work. So Max sways too, and the current carries them all and all the drumbeats, from the light and flashing to the deep and thundering. His feet stay fixed.

There was a day once when the whole world was white. In his grandparents' day, it would have been considered a rush job, but times had changed. His parents and Jessie's were in agreement on at least this one point: every opportunity for joy needed to be embraced. So his mother beat the bed sheets until they were clean, embellished them with lace from family heirlooms, and draped her body in it.

The cotton folds swirled around her as she moved. She spun in his arms and then let them fold around her as she pressed her back to his chest. There in that combination of bright laughter, swirling pale cotton, and the hidden curve of her barely swelling belly was all the good left in the world. And there he was, so privileged as to cup his hands around it. 

She used to dance wildly to the doof at the barbies, kicking off her shoes, spinning on her bare feet. Now she swayed gently, as if riding across the dunes. She had been transformed, all her spirit and spunk given purpose and focus; she'd become a woman, a wife, a mother. The weight of such a person leaning on him was overwhelming: could he hold up his end? Be a man, a husband, a father? Give all his youthful energies purpose and focus? Fix just their little corner of the world?

 _Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum._ He never honestly considered that he would fail. Now he can't seem to consider any other outcome. There's only one thing he knows how to do well anymore. So that's what he does. He surrenders to the storm and runs for cover.


	13. A Favor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy, this one's a biggie. 
> 
> For enhanced reading experience I recommend this song:
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/track/1Sli4o6yxZWDXZynGjZxSg

Sudden terror fills his feral eyes. His face blanches, and he leaves. Everyone sees him go, but one tries to stop him. He simply slips through them as if leaving a party without notice is nothing of note. Damn fool seems to have a talent for moving through crowds... and no consideration for niceties. 

"Don't mind us," Furiosa says as she hurries after him. Maybe he's right, maybe it is time to leave. She hasn't realised how much dancing took out of her until now. "Thank you; have a good night." She grabs her bag as she passes, and a chorus of giggles disguised as well wishes fill the space she's left

So she follows him - out the door and into the hallway, where the drums still sound like a beating heart. _Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum._ The tempo picks up again; they really were only slowing it down for her and her stupid, broken body. She's not surprised, but the thought does makes her feel heavy. It passes when she reaches his lonely figure.

"Are you ok?" she asks him, his back still turned to her.

She waits for him to acknowledge her presence as she reaches to touch his shoulder. He sighs heavily through clenched jaws. She keeping waiting, her hand hovering just out of his view...or maybe just in it because he nods, and so she lets it down, gradually sliding its weight onto him.

"Just needed air."

He sets his hand on top of hers, and they stand in silence, just listening to the drums. And she searches for the words she needs, words she can't seem to find, words that may not even exist. Together they stare down the hallway as the darkness swollows the little lights.

***

She remembers waking up to warmth and wandering if she were dead and deep in the embrace of the Resting Mother. Then she felt the light of the sun on her face and the hum of the road in her bones. She groaned as it shook her, and then she was steady. Voices whispered around her, but her awareness was too narrow to pull apart their words.

"Did we win?" she mumbled to no one in particular.

"Yeah, we won alright," a voice vibrated beneath her, a voice deep and earthy. "You tore the fucker's face off." She could hear an aching smile in his voice.

She did remember. She remembered how Joe's face fell away. She remembered being lifted and then surrounded by faces overwhelming her with their surreal, swirling concern. "And the pass?" Her voice was a jagged remnant of itself.

"Closed."

"Good."

"Still a ways to go. You have time to rest."

She couldn't imagine moving; breathing hurt enough. Every breath burned on the way in and stabbed on the way out. She turned her face towards his neck to shield her eyes from the sun. The rough fabric of his clothing irritated her raw skin and swollen flesh.

"Careful." He gently cupped a hand over her face.

"Do we have... a plan?" she asked, her voice breaking and her eyes still closed."

He asked someone for water then answered her, "Mm-hmm. You trained those girls well."

He propped her head higher and pressed a canteen to her lips. Water - a mouthful at a time, she felt her thoughts and senses clear. She sipped as she wondered why he thought she had anything to do with training the girls. They'd excelled her every expectation.

She turned her chin away from the canteen, and he handed it off. "Save your energy, conquering hero." He shaded her again.

"And you?"

"Your driver." He almost sounded wistfully proud. "You stay hidden til the time is right."

She nodded although that wasn't quite what he meant. The nerves in her face protested the movement, pressure in her sinuses urging her to be still. "Good plan." She felt herself tiring, her head getting heavy. "Then what?"

"Play it by ear," he whispered.

He eased her down so she could sleep again. He curled himself around her, and she sank into the shadows he made for her. She drifted to sleep riding a gentle _ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum._

***

There's something about skin against skin, flesh against flesh that calms her inner feral. Furiosa hopes he feels the same. Touch is not normally something she handles well; it usually makes her feel vulnerable, but this is different. It doesn't matter if she can't find the right words because words can wait. She thinks she might feel safe, but she has so few recent memories of what safe even feels like - all with him.

Now that words can wait they come more easily; they roll from her mouth like a rock slide, first one or two, and then the rest tumble after. Fucking buzzard booze; she did have too much. "You know... there was always a part of me, sometimes small, but always there, that believed that I deserved everything bad that happened to me. I always thought I was being punished for everything I'd done wrong, and believe me, there's been a lot. But then a wrench got thrown into the whole system."

He turns to face her now, pivots on the axis of her touch. He nods in shadow and silence.

"Good, because no one around here gets it. They just keep pumping air in my tires like there's no hole to be patched. They don't know what it is to wake up in the middle of the night and wonder, 'Why the fuck am I still alive?'"

"Mm-hmm." Lamplight casts long shadows on his face. He looks down.

"So why did you do it?" she asks.

"Because I could." He says it like it's the simplest concept in the world as he withdraws his hand from hers and steps just beyond her reach.

"I guess some people just can't help being helpful." She folds her arms over her chest.

He takes the bait. "Some people are worth helping."

"And that's just it." She starts to pace. Her thoughts are always clearer when she's moving. "I realised it as I watched you leave, but then I had to find it again: you didn't save me for you, and you didn't save me for The Citadel - You don't care about this place. You saved me for me. You saved me because you decided that I was worth saving."

"Everyone thought..."

"Not me..." Now the rock slide of words has stopped, and she's left to pull herself from the rubble. It's her turn to look away. It wasn't that she wanted to die a martyr; in fact, she’s ashamed of how much Joe's exhaust fumes had gotten inside of her. But she had figured death on her own terms was the best she could aim for... that is until her mind went dark and another part of her took over, a part that's always been bad at dying.

Her eyes are wet with tears. She blinks them back and fights to keep her voice strong - it's a losing battle. "Now when I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder why I'm still alive, I finally have an answer: someone, someone I trust, someone I respect thinks, that I matter, and that I am worth saving. How do I even begin to wrap my head around that? It's..." She pauses to take a slow, deliberate breath. The air fills her chest, still sore and achy, her lungs still raw and fragile. Only the blood in her bruises is her own. "Profoundly humbling."

He's impossible to read now. She's afraid if she reaches for him he'll run, and the wasteland will swallow him. The world is so savage, and he's more fragile than he lets anyone see. 

And so she takes a chance. "I know you trust me; I know you respect me, so please, believe me when I say: I think that you matter, and I think that you are worth saving. This isn't me trying to pay you back because I feel indebted - although I do - because if everything had turned out differently, if we had just parted ways at The Salt, I still would think that you matter and are worth saving."

She isn't sure when the tears first overflowed. They roll down now, hot and salty on her cheeks. She stubbornly wipes them as he turns to her. She wants to look away, but she knows she can't; she knows this is too important. Giddy always said you had to hear something at least three times to remember it.

"I need to ask you a favor," she saying as calmly and resolutely as she can manage. "You can say no," she's quick to clarify. "You can disagree; you can swear up and down that I'm wasting my caring on you, but it's mine, and I'll do with it as I see fit. I'm going you your car back to you, fixed up better than ever, because it's yours, and I have no right to it, but here's the favor: stay here until it's ready. Stay here until I can equip it to my standards. Don't worry, I'll move it to the top of the queue. I just don't want someone else doing what this place did to you. I simply think this world is better off with you in it. Let me do what I can because you matter, and you are worth saving."

"I'll try." His voice is soft, barely a whisper, and his eyes are sad. His eyes are always sad.

"Thank you." She swells with the words, not with pride or even contentment, simply with being...like she's overgrown her own skin - maybe that's why she's she's crying. He presses his thumb against her cheek to catch a tear. He smiles as the clear liquid touches his skin.


	14. Peace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See the footnotes for a bonus mini-fic.

Max means it when he says he'll try, if for no other reason than it’s what she wants. Furiosa stands quietly now, her shoulders dripping from her clavicles. She lets her bag slide from her shoulder to her feet, and the bag’s metallic contents clank against each other as it hits the floor. She sighs.

He speaks first, certain she has run out of words. “Mm, ready to turn in.” 

She nods as she reaches for the wall on her left to steady herself. Her scarred flesh slides over the uneven stone before settling. She wipes her eyes and then nods again as her fingertips leave glistening trails on her forehead.

“Could you, mm, show the way?” He lets her decide where. He can survive a night alone in this place without her. He's done it before; he can do it again. He remembers a time when being afraid of the dark was childish; now it's common sense… But it's not the dark he fears; it’s what the darkness hides, not the unknown but what he knows too well. There's no quiet in this place, no stillness, just walls upon walls for blocking paths and bouncing echoes.

She rights herself by pushing the wall away. “Of course,” she says as she scoops up her bag and walks past him as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. And maybe nothing has; zipping and unzipping herself at will is her way. 

He tries unsuccessfully to think of a way to offer to carry her leather bag for her, not that he thinks she needs the help – more like he needs to be able to help. She’s just opened herself up to him, and he has no way to reciprocate. His armour doesn't slide on and off so easily; he's long ago forgotten its sequence of straps and buckles.

She leads him downward through a gently sloping passage. The drumming becomes quieter, now almost a whispered _ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum._ Then they turn, passing other shadowed passages.

"Here we are." She fumbles with the lock on a metal door. "You're welcome to stay, or not. There's room. I thought you would prefer this over open sleeping with the boys. We haven't set up any guest rooms. If you leave, just remember to lock the door."

"To get back in?"

She smiles, "You already know the code."

The door opens, and there really isn't room... at least not on the bed, but it's all lovely anyway: he can't remember the last time he slept in a real room with a door and walls and everything. Probably more of a cot than a bed, a couple of pads and a blanket sit on a stone ledge curving out of a wall. A window opens up to the desert between the bed and metal table with a folding chair. Stacks of books have been piled on the table and shoved against the walls. There's a single gas lamp lighting the room just enough for him to safely navigate its edges. He gets the sense that she's only turned on the light for his benefit. It isn't even bright enough for him to decipher the white scribbles on the dark walls. 

His gaze passes over them: notes, figures, faces. There are maybe ten or so scattered between the notes, their faces rendered in ghostly white, their expressions frozen. Their eyes seem to watch him. 

"Plans," she explains, "supplies, charts..." 

Faces of girls and women with wild hair... faces of men and boys with hollowed cheeks... faces strange, familiar, and strangely familiar. Their lines are crude but their details are specific, like the scars around the eyes of the one he knows is called Angharad… the tubing carefully wrapped and bound to the lower left of one’s chin.

“People I don't want to forget.” 

He has to turn away from them. They peer into him expectantly from their realm of smudgy chalk. So he looks at her instead and sees how she is fidgeting, like a school girl caught scrawling hearts in her notebook. So he looks again tentatively, but then he sees the kindness in their expressions. These aren't the people who haunt her, at least not in the way that his ghosts follow him. These are the faces who answer her late night questions. He's touched to be in such an intimate place, touched to be among them.

She practically collapses onto the cot and pats the spot beside her invitingly. He hesitates: there really isn't enough room. She grabs a canteen from a ledge and hands it to him so he can drink while she cleans her teeth with a bit of thread – disciplined to a fault. She chugs down what's left of the water, tosses back her head and opens her throat – long, vulnerable, beautiful.

“There's a trough and bucket in the corner if you need it,” she says, probably wondering why he hasn't joined her yet. “I can give you a tutorial.”

Sure enough, there is. It's artfully hidden in the shadows in a throwback to modesty. “I'll figure it out.”

She sinks onto the single blanket and watches him as her eyes start to drift shut. She blinks back sleep. “What's wrong?”

She looks cold. “Another blanket?”

“Hold on…”

“Just tell me where.”

She props herself up on her elbow. She only holds the position long enough to gesture towards a single trunk before wincing as she eases herself onto her back. It must have been too much of a stretch. He finds the extra blanket easily and drapes it over her; he even takes a moment to pull the slippers from her feet before covering them in the fabric folds. She stretches, letting her toes peak out for an instant before retracting them – a flicker of callused skin.

“What do you want?” she asks.

“Oh, I uh… don't mean to…” 

“That's not what I mean,” she says as he turn off the light. “I'm letting you do this because it makes you happy.” 

That's not the word he would use, happier perhaps, but everything is relative. No, a better word would be quiet or calm or something else he doesn't dare think. He sits beside her and sets to work on his brace. He knows the buckles by heart, but his injured hand has slowed the process. Most nights recently he's just left the brace on, a stiff morning being a small price to pay for the ability to jump up in the middle of the night as needed. Here removal is worth the effort. 

“How’s your hand? I’ve noticed you favoring it.”

“Healing.” And everything that comes with it…his flesh no longer rages against him. Instead it has become frustratingly stubborn and passive aggressive – it makes him repeat every command. The darkness helps him focus on the metal and leather beneath his fingers.

“Would you like a loner?”

He decides accepting is the least he can do. “Incoming,” he says as he swing his leg onto the bed and positions himself so he's parallel to her shoulders. “Push down here.” He guides her hand in the dark.

“Have you tried leveraging with your elbow?”

He chuckles as he opens the top buckle. “This one sure, but the bottom? He shakes his head, "Not that flexible.”

He takes her hand again, and her fingers trail along his leg as they glide down. Her touch is casual and completely unnecessary. If his attention were elsewhere he wouldn't notice it, but there it is…a faint but undeniable whisper. He takes his time with the other buckles, or more precisely, he takes time between the buckles so his skin can connect with hers just a little while longer. After the last buckle, he lets the brace fall to the floor with a triumphant clatter. 

Furiosa shuffles the blanket over him as he settles himself into the bed. His right leg dangles over the side. He kicks off his pre-loosened boots, and they too meet the floor exuberantly. 

“You never did answer my question.” By now her prickly head is on his shoulder, and his arm is draped over hers, his fingers curled around her nub. “What do you want?”

Her words hover over him. "Don't want anything."

"Yes you do." Everyone wants something, maybe not anything concrete, maybe not even anything with a word, but everyone wants something. "What are you looking for?"

He’s quiet for a long while. He can feel his own pulse in his chest. _Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum._ She must hear it quickening in contrast to the steady rhythm of her breathing. 

He has a word now, as good a word as any. “Peace,” he finally says, although he’s not sure what he means by it.

She seems satisfied by it though. “Mm,” she sighs as she sinks into him. “Couldn’t have said it better myself… The Mothers, they, I mean we, have a story about a hero looking for peace. He travels, wandering, having adventures, thinking, maybe if I can just save this town… kill this monster… maybe…” her voice drifts. “Remind me in the morning… But the Mothers – I think you remind them of him. That’s why they’re so interested in us.”

“Us?”

She nods into him. “It’s just a story. Remind me in the morning. I’ll tell you how Sekhmet made the Wasteland, and Hercules made the Green Place.”

He turns his chin towards her head. She doesn't smell like the desert now. But there's still the scent of soot and sweat and the motor oil that permeates this place. 

“Would like to hear it.”

“Mm.” he can almost hear a contented smile as her breathing smooths and deepens.

He curls his right hand around her shoulder. He wishes as hard as he's ever wished for anything for time to stop so they might exist as a tangle of breaths and heartbeats forever, _ba-dim in, ba-dum out, ba-dim in, ba-dum_ out. Even his ghost are quiet.

“Good night, Max.”

He practically jumps up. He could have sworn she was already asleep. She probably was close at least, but now she's laughing at him.

“Wait, you remember?”

She laughs again, so hard she coughs. “Did you honestly think no one would tell me?”

“Hoped they wouldn't.”

“Such a foolish thing to be worried about.” She settles back into him, burying her face into his shoulder. “Besides, you know hope is a mistake.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Vuvalini actually have two versions of the story Furiosa is referencing, one past version in which the Green Place is created and one future prophecy version in which the world is healed. I've included the shorter past version below. The longer version will be posted separately. I will be explaining Vuvalini religious concepts in Chapter 8 (Appendix A) of _7000 Days: Part 1_.
> 
> Vuvalini religion is synchronistic, meaning that it blends various religious traditions. I have selected stories from world polytheistic traditions I have studied and adapts them to fit a Vuvlini cultural context.
> 
> There was a man named Hercules, the strongest man who ever lived, but whose strength was burdened with even greater suffering. One day a great madness swollowed him. Some say it was sent by his father, Zeus, Thundering Father, and others say it was sent by Zeus's wife Hera, and still others say it was just the evil times seeping under his skin. When it cleared, he was alone with the corpses of all he loved.
> 
> So he dragged himself across the land and came eventually to the temple Minerva, Teaching Mother of Warriors. He asked her how he might rid himself of the guilt and grief that burdened his soul, and she proscribed a series of tasks, ten at first, works of heroism. So he traveled the land killing this beast and that, saving this settlement and that, retrieving this sacred object and that, but his guilt and grief were stronger than ever.
> 
> He went back to Minerva and asked again. This time she assigned him two more labours. When his guilt and grief were still with him after those labours, he gave up. He decided that he would never be free and resolved to let his guilt and grief consume him.
> 
> But every time he lay down to die, some other task would present itself. So he would drag himself up and help where he could simply because he could.
> 
> Meanwhile, the land was under attack by a great demon, the worst of all the world's evils. The gods and goddesses manifested their combine power as Sekhmet, Destroying Mother. Sekhmet saw the destruction the demon had wrought upon the Earth and its people and road her rage into battle. She breathed her fire upon the land and turned it to dust so that the Earth's bounty could no longer be ravaged. Then she tore the demon's head from his body and drank of his blood, but her thirst for blood remained. Her thirst unquenched, she slaughtered all in her path.
> 
> "What have we done?" wailed the gods and goddesses, for the fruit of their combined power was greater than any of them could stop.
> 
> But as luck would have it, Sekhmet came upon Hercules with his great strength and suffering. Surely he would defeat her and return her divine power to be redistributed amongst the Panthean. And fight they did. He swung his club, and she gnashed her teeth. The sounds of their great struggle echoed from the mountains. They fought for a day and a night until they were both exhausted, and then while they struggled to catch their breaths, their eyes met. Then Hercules saw her preparing to strike again, and he did not yield. Instead he stood his ground while her teeth sank into his throat. He stood his ground while she drank from him instead of the world until her thirst was satiated and he fell to the ground.
> 
> Her anger quieted, and as she looked at him and struggled to comprehend his kindness. Sekhmet, Desert Maker, Raging Mother began to weep, her holy tears raining upon the land, replenishing it. Where they fell, the Resting Mother woke, and the Nourishing Mother let her bounty feed her people. While the rest of the world lies ravaged and broken, here there is green; here there is hope.
> 
> And what of Hercules and his great strength and greater suffering? Hercules finally found his peace... and happiness... and love.


	15. Coda

Furiosa leans out her window. She doesn't know if he can see her, but that's beside the point. She spots his car, no longer quite so black and matte – now it won't overheat so easily. She waves, not just at Max but also at the vast expanse of wasteland that stands to receive him. 

He raises a hand through his open window, probably not because he saw her, probably just because that's what friends do while parting. Then Max speeds away, leaving Furiosa chewing on her jealousy as she sits down at her table. She holds a her metal forearm between her thighs as she and a pair of pliers coax a finger back into shape.

### 

The road stretchers before Max; it’s golden in the morning light. He runs his fingers over his new steering wheel with its fiery eyes and face half black. 

“Budge over, we've got incoming!” shouts Glory gleefully as she tugs at Angharad’s hand. “Can she be my sister?”

“If she wants,” answers Hope as she moves over and squeezes herself, Glory, Angharad, Brus, and Dog all in the back seat.

Who knows how many trail behind? His passenger seat is always empty. Maybe one day Jessie will forgive him enough to join him. Maybe she'll hold Sprog while he sticks his head out the window and pretends to be Dog like Max did with his pet when he was a child.

He waves out the window and glances in the rear vision mirror. Then it's one-one-two-one, red, black… Go!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've not been able to find the name of the Aboriginal man briefly seen in Max's visions. I've named him Brus.


End file.
